25 years ago I left her. I will return soon, so I promised her. But it took me more then two decades.

“I bear you no grudge, it’s just how things are going”, so she told me. She was still beautiful. The wound she had sustained during the fire, 27 years ago, was healed nicely. You could still see the scar, but that didn’t seem to bother her in the least. “This is what I am, it’s part of my past”. A strong lady, a lady with style.

For two weeks the both of us wandered through her streets. Strange, how familiar that felt, how at ease I was. As if I never had been away.

Yesterday we said goodbye, near the river. I wanted to make a promise. Again. But she shut me up, by putting her fingers on my lips. “Don’t. When you want to visit me, just do so. And if not, well ….”

And she walked away, her black hair moved by the wind. She never looked back. Not once.

The people, the music, the “Tristesse”, Amália Rodriques, Prego (a beef sandwich), Marquis de Pombal (the guy who designed the streets of Lisbon after the earthquake of 1755), the Botanical Garden, Dulce Pontes, etc. etc.

Bethany was one of my fellow students at the artschool in Utrecht, the HKU (in the Netherlands). Bethany was and is extremely talented. She can do everything.

Draw, paint, etc. In our last year at the academy, she started with her “pinhole” photography. She made really small boxes with mirrors inside. And she made her own pinhole cameras, which she put inside her selfmade worlds. These cameras where covered with mirrors also, otherwise you could recognize them as cameras. They would become a part of the picture, so she had to disguise them.

With this technique, it looks like we are watching large en high rooms, as if we are in some kind of cathedral. We are part of the picture.

Nowadays her pinhole pictures are far more complicated. And Bethany also makes beautiful short animations, like “Red-End”.